Compare and Contrast of Annabel Lee and Porphyria's Lover
Compare and contrast poetry essay
The poems ‘Annabel Lee’ by Edgar Allan Poe and ‘Porphyria’s lover’ by Robert Browning are emotion and thought provoking. They are both about romance and grief with the main themes clearly being love and death. The largest similarity is the way the poems can be interpreted and the biggest difference is the way the women in question died. There are more similarities than there are differences between these two poems.
The first and most prominent similarity between ‘Annabel Lee’ and ‘Porphyria’s lover’ is the way both poems can be interpreted, depending entirely on the reader. At first both poems seem to be happy and about love but as you progress through them, you find that they come to a rather grisly ending. In ‘Annabel Lee’ you read that her lover goes into her tomb at night and sleeps next to her corpse. ‘I lie down by the side of my darling...’ And in ‘Porphyria’s lover’ you are told that it was Porphyria’s lover who kills her and then also sleeps next to her dead body. ‘In one yellow string I wound, three times her little throat around’. Both these poems can be seen as true love never dies or they can be viewed as creepy, obsessive boyfriends who can’t move on. In ‘Annabel Lee’ the strange/creepy part is the same as in ‘Porphyria’s lover’. But ‘Porphyria’s lover’ might be seen by some might as sweet and the highest act of love, because Porphyria is actually an incurable blood disease in which the sufferers die an awful death. So by killing her he might have actually been trying to save her. In ‘Annabel Lee’ the fact that he spends every night with his lover even though she is dead shows that he still has so much love for her. Some people may see this as sweet and think it shows devotion.
The main difference between the two poems is the way the women died. In ‘Porphyria’s lover’ she did not die of natural causes or by accident. She was in fact, murdered by her own lover. In ‘Annabel Lee’, Annabel died of what was probably
The poems ‘Annabel Lee’ by Edgar Allan Poe and ‘Porphyria’s lover’ by Robert Browning are emotion and thought provoking. They are both about romance and grief with the main themes clearly being love and death. The largest similarity is the way the poems can be interpreted and the biggest difference is the way the women in question died. There are more similarities than there are differences between these two poems.
The first and most prominent similarity between ‘Annabel Lee’ and ‘Porphyria’s lover’ is the way both poems can be interpreted, depending entirely on the reader. At first both poems seem to be happy and about love but as you progress through them, you find that they come to a rather grisly ending. In ‘Annabel Lee’ you read that her lover goes into her tomb at night and sleeps next to her corpse. ‘I lie down by the side of my darling...’ And in ‘Porphyria’s lover’ you are told that it was Porphyria’s lover who kills her and then also sleeps next to her dead body. ‘In one yellow string I wound, three times her little throat around’. Both these poems can be seen as true love never dies or they can be viewed as creepy, obsessive boyfriends who can’t move on. In ‘Annabel Lee’ the strange/creepy part is the same as in ‘Porphyria’s lover’. But ‘Porphyria’s lover’ might be seen by some might as sweet and the highest act of love, because Porphyria is actually an incurable blood disease in which the sufferers die an awful death. So by killing her he might have actually been trying to save her. In ‘Annabel Lee’ the fact that he spends every night with his lover even though she is dead shows that he still has so much love for her. Some people may see this as sweet and think it shows devotion.
The main difference between the two poems is the way the women died. In ‘Porphyria’s lover’ she did not die of natural causes or by accident. She was in fact, murdered by her own lover. In ‘Annabel Lee’, Annabel died of what was probably